Not by much these days. The Pixel 10 actually gives you half the storage as the iPhone 17 at the same price.

The only Android phones that are significantly cheaper than equivalent iPhone tend to come with some kind of compromise (and don’t forget that Apple’s phones start at $600 - the iPhone 16e exists).

Storage needn't be expensive. Any 150€ phone will let you put in a 2TB sdcard. It's specifically the premium brand phones that squeeze you out

The specs that you can't just plug and play are a bit more relevant to look at I'd say

That’s an irrelevant aside because we are already comparing apples to apples here. The reality is that there are very few phones with SD card slots in them.

I’m personally fine with it at this point. It’s not ideal and it’s not consumer friendly, but SD cards are slow and failure prone compared to internal storage, and I find that multiple storage volumes introduces management friction (moving apps and content between two locations).

Try Xiaomi.

I did. I cannot recommend it. There is no real way to unlock bootloaders on these. They've locked it down so much that you can't really do anything but run what they give you.

Xiaomi phones have built-in ads, that's one of the reasons it gets to be cheaper.

The Chinese phone ecosystem is basically unavailable in the US. Huawei was banned, and none of the other brands sell products officially besides OnePlus, which has iPhone-adjacent pricing.

Not sold in the US officially, no warranty service.

Ehh, I'm unconvinced. A lot of these cheapo Android phones have bizarre restrictions and really short lifespans. A used iPhone might last longer and therefore be cheaper in the long run.